Are You Able to Solve It? That Overlooked Netherlands Invention Which Shaped our Modern Globe

There are many candidates for the title of “planet’s greatest invention.” The wheel. The printing press. The steam engine.

As per a new book, though, that title belongs to a automated sawmill invented through Dutch inventor Corneliszoon van Uitgeest during 1593.

“Before automated cutting, constructing a modest trading ship necessitated approximately 10 lumberjacks working for 90 days,” writes Jaime Dávila. “With wind-driven sawmills, an identical quantity of cut lumber might be manufactured within a week.”

Owing to their rapid mechanical cutter, which turned timber to planks using virtually no human effort, the Dutch were able to build ships faster than any other nation, which sparked one hundred years of Netherlands maritime, financial and artistic dominance across the continent and the globe.

The Original True Manufacturing Device

Corneliszoon’s lumber mill, contends Dávila, was “humanity’s initial true factory apparatus.” A windmill turned a wheel. A single part transformed its circular movement to up-and-down motion to power the cutting blade. A separate mechanism transformed that same rotary motion into a sideway’s motion advancing the log toward the blade. A ratchet system moved the wood ahead a measured step each cycle.

“Every component was simple by itself. The Dutchman’s genius lay in how to integrate them so the machine acted within a perfectly controlled sequence, cutting with each downward motion and moving with each return stroke. This constituted a remarkably clever use of fundamental components.”

Which brings us to the current challenge. I’d like you to reinvent a key the basic ideas behind this historic invention.

Round and Up

Construct a machine which converts rotary motion into vertical motion. You have these components exclusively: A spinning wheel. Two pins. Two rods. A “guide”, that is a cylinder or housing through which one of the rods can slide snugly. (Assume it is possible to mount components on a base, so that the components do not collapse.)

I’ll be back later today UK with the answer.

In the interim, PLEASE NO HINTS. Rather, please propose (less celebrated) candidates for the planet’s greatest invention.